Recent reports from the National Institutes of Health, the AAMC, and the Institute of Medicine recommend strengthening training programs for physicians in the methods of clinical research to translate advances in basic science to improvements in health. This application is to establish a new training program with the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases (GMID) at Tufts-New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine in "Clinical Research Training in Infectious Diseases." David R. Snydman, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of GMID, will direct the program. The proposed training program is unique in that it combines training by senior infectious disease specialists with outstanding records in clinical research with that by world leaders in epidemiology, biostatistics, clinical investigation, and health services research. Furthermore, the program differs from similar other programs in schools of public health in that our goal is to train independent infectious disease investigators to perform outstanding clinical research with very strong methodological background. The objectives of the proposal are to: 1) educate the future leaders of academic infectious disease in epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases; 2) provide experience and mentoring in the design and implementation of clinical research studies; 3) facilitate collaborative studies of basic science and clinical research between multiple disciplines in medicine; and 4) promote health outcomes research as it relates to infectious diseases prevention and treatment. Postdoctoral degree programs available to the prospective fellows will be either a Masters of Science (MS) or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in Clinical Research offered through the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at TUSM. This will be accomplished through very vigorous course work given at the Sackler School of Graduate Medical Sciences in the Tufts University School of Medicine. The individual mentoring from faculty is complemented by a variety of internal and external oversight committees. Mentored Research Projects, which are hypothesis-driven studies mentored by a faculty member in GMID or Clinical Care Research or a collaboration of the two divisions, will be required to complete the program. Trainees will be expected to understand the full range of methodologies in clinical research, including interventional trials, case-control studies, observational studies, the Human Investigation Review process, the regulatory process, and complex data analysis including time dependent multivariate analyses. The goal of this training program will be to develop independent infectious diseases clinical research investigators highly skilled in clinical research methodologies and application. [unreadable] [unreadable]